Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

My name is Ray Feurstein. My family has always been involved with the paranormal. My great aunt was a sooth-sayer and my aunt (on my fathers side) was a fortuneteller. My great uncle dabbled in the dark art (seven book Moses). My father was a practicing Druide. (So I found out many years later, after his death.)

The story happens in the Adirondack Mountains at a lake called Sacandaga. My family has owned property there since 1946. I grew up on the lake. An incredibly beautiful area. But it wasn’t always a lake, it was a valley with many small hamlet villages. Before flooding the valley, they moved the villages and the homesteads along with all the graves to another location on higher ground. So everyone thought.

As a kid growing up on this lake my friend Ron and I use to go down to the lake to ski and swim, all the normal things you would do at a lake. Many times as we went to the lake around early morning (6:00 am) and at dusk around 8:30-9:00 pm we would see a figure standing at the edge of the woods just before the light of the beach. It was a girl about 16 years old with a sundress on. The dress was beige with small blue flowers on it. She had long blonde hair and was a slight figure not skinny just petite and very pretty. She would turn around each time we saw her, she would look over her shoulder and smile at us. Each time we would hurry our pace to catch up to her, she would get more and more transparent as we approached until about five feet from where she was standing she would completely disappear.

What was interesting about this encounter is each time we saw her she looked at us and smiled, and when she disappeared she left a perfumed aroma of Lilacs. It would linger for several moments and then it to would disappear. We saw her many times though our lives there. We began to call her Lizzy. She seemed to like that.

As we got older we saw her less and less. Maybe because we were older and had other interests and also girl friends that occupied our time. We forgot about Lizzy. It wasn’t until I was drafted into the military that she reappeared again. It was 1970 and the Viet Nam war was still on. My parents had a going away party for me with a bunch of my friends.

My vacation home buddy came from Buffalo to say good-bye as well. We took a walk down to the beach that day as we did so many times before, and there she was. But this time she was facing us and was sad. We approached her talking to her telling her we missed her all these years and it was good to see her again. Interesting enough was the fact that she was facing us but as we approached she didn’t disappear. Lizzy stood there looking at us with this sad and worried look on her face. She knew somehow that I was going away to a war. We stopped short of her so not to scare or chase her away, but it didn’t seem that she wanted to go anywhere.

We all stood there not speaking until Ron my friend said to her, “Lizzy, why are you so sad?” We stood a little while longer and she put her hands together on her heart, smiled once more at me then turned her head around and vanished. The Lilac aroma was there for a long time after. Ron wondered if it were possible that the spirit Lizzy missed us too but maybe me more. I was 19 at the time. I am now 55 years old.

I still have the camp and I still go there often. She had only appeared to me once more when I returned from the service. September 23, 1976, at dusk, on the edge of the woods, just before the light of the beach. Her dress, her smile and the aroma of Lilacs. At that moment I wished I could put my arm around her, but then all at once she vanished. I have never seen her again but every once in a while I will catch the sent of lilacs and know she is still there. This is a true story. Not scary but true all the same.

Written by Ray Feurstein, Copyright 2009